Students thought shooting suspect was joking

Friends of the 15-year-old boy charged with shooting up a California school and killing two students said he had talked about bringing a gun to school. But they thought Charles Andrew Williams was joking.

Police say Williams entered Santana High School on Monday with a loaded .22-calibre pistol hidden in his backpack.

Soon after morning classes started, Williams allegedly shot two people in a bathroom, then walked into a public area and opened fire. Police say he stopped to reload his weapon at least four times and fired as many as 30 shots.

When the shooting ended, two people were dead and 13 others, including a 29-year-old student teacher and a 22-year-old campus security guard, were wounded.

• FROM MARCH, 5, 2001: Two dead, 13 wounded in U.S. school shooting

Bryan Zuckor, 14, and Randy Gordon, 17, were killed. Zuckor died from the attack in the restroom. Gordon was hit in an open area of the high school and died in hospital.

Williams will be charged as an adult with murder, assault with a deadly weapon and gun possession. He is set for an arraignment on Wednesday.

Police say they have not established a motive and don't think the suspect had any targets in mind.

Students at Williams' school said he was a skinny kid who often got picked on. Others said the 15-year-old had recently been involved in fights with other students and spent time on the weekend talking about staging a rampage.

Police are describing him as an angry young man.

Williams and his father, who allegedly owned the gun used in Monday's incident, moved to California from Maryland about a year ago. His father and mother divorced 10 years ago. Williams had been living with his father ever since.

Williams' mother told the The New York Times her son was "skinny, but tough," and "not picked on like a lot of people."

Monday's shooting was the deadliest school shooting in the U.S. since April 1999 when two Columbine High School students in Littleton, Colorado killed 12 students and a teacher before taking their own lives.